Shriram Krishnamurthi
@shriramk@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp yesterday
Isaac King Advocates Replacing Floating-Point with Exact Arithmetic in High-Level Languages Last updated 13 hours ago Software engineer Isaac King initiated a discussion on X on November 5, arguing that high-level languages like Python and JavaScript should default to arbitrary-precision arithmetic, such as rationals, to avoid floating-point precision errors that burden developers. Supporters agree on the need for greater accuracy in non-integer computations, while critics, including programming languages researcher Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, highlight performance costs and difficulties with exact representations for functions like square roots. The exchange revives historical debates on balancing precision and speed in programming, with alternatives like decimal floating-point and libraries such as GNU MP already available but not standard. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.
Isaac King Advocates Replacing Floating-Point with Exact Arithmetic in High-Level Languages Last updated 13 hours ago Software engineer Isaac King initiated a discussion on X on November 5, arguing that high-level languages like Python and JavaScript should default to arbitrary-precision arithmetic, such as rationals, to avoid floating-point precision errors that burden developers. Supporters agree on the need for greater accuracy in non-integer computations, while critics, including programming languages researcher Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, highlight performance costs and difficulties with exact representations for functions like square roots. The exchange revives historical debates on balancing precision and speed in programming, with alternatives like decimal floating-point and libraries such as GNU MP already available but not standard. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.
Isaac King Advocates Replacing Floating-Point with Exact Arithmetic in High-Level Languages Last updated 13 hours ago Software engineer Isaac King initiated a discussion on X on November 5, arguing that high-level languages like Python and JavaScript should default to arbitrary-precision arithmetic, such as rationals, to avoid floating-point precision errors that burden developers. Supporters agree on the need for greater accuracy in non-integer computations, while critics, including programming languages researcher Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, highlight performance costs and difficulties with exact representations for functions like square roots. The exchange revives historical debates on balancing precision and speed in programming, with alternatives like decimal floating-point and libraries such as GNU MP already available but not standard. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.
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